Meet Tess!

Wyck is happy to welcome Tess Frydman as our new Director of Interpretation and Public Outreach! Tess is so excited to be working at Wyck, since her dream has always been to work at a historic site. Tess’ passion with history started when she was very young; she was very interested in her family history, and that her grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. Tess has always had a fascination with how history shapes the present. She is most interested in cultural history, the daily life and how people made do with what they had, and the fact that history has not one narrative but a million different stories to discover.

Additionally, Tess has worked on some impressive projects such as the Delaware Abandoned Cultural Property Legislation, Fall Fundraising Event Proposal for Watkins Historical Society, Museum S.W.A.T, Upstate Historical Tour, and Object Pamphlets for Potential Use in the Winterthur Museum Galleries. She is excited that her projects at Wyck will allow her to dip her toes into fundraising and give her new responsibilities, such as communicating with vendors and working with several board committees. She is looking forward to working on the digitization of the collections, along with the important process of understanding the scope and uniqueness of our collection’s holdings here at Wyck.

Tess said that there are similarities and differences in working at her previous jobs and working at Wyck. For similarities, she said that she has the same tasks with preservation and collection management, as well as reaching out to the community in order for the historic sites to stay relevant. What is different is the sense that she gets to work IN the historic house and not in an office. She is constantly seeing the living spaces of the residents, which makes it a very active on-sight job.

“It was perfect timing to have this position open up when it did. After I was shown the collections it was hard to walk away from,” Tess said.

Wyck and Tess are both so happy to have her here. Tess is thrilled about the potential of the collections and “the opportunity that one doesn’t get at most places: to learn about historic life-ways here at Wyck”. You can meet Tess at Philadelphia Honey Fest on September 8th at Wyck!